Tricolon

Tricolon (tri-co-lon): Three parallel elements of the same length occurring together in a series.

I laughed. I cried. I choked. It was my mother’s birthday and laughing, crying and choking are the most vivid memories of the time we spent together. Laughing was rare, but crying and choking happened every day. I would cry because of what she had done to me and she would choke me and tell me to shut up. If I didn’t shut up she would hit me with a spatula and pour ice water over me. if that didn’t work, she would stick pins in me—she called it voodoo acupuncture. As you can imagine, none of those remedies worked—they actually made things worse. So, she would leave me out on the sidewalk until I stopped.

I had a giant wingtip shoe for a bassinet. My father had worked for a shoe repair shop. The shoe hung from a sign outside that said “Shoe Business.” It was a play on “show business” that nobody got, but we got the shoe when the business closed. When I was 12 I could still fit in it comfortably. I polished it once a month and kept the laces limber by tying and untying them twice a week. Dad subsequently got a job as a shoe salesman. He said he liked “looking up north” when he was fitting a shoe on a woman. I don’t know why he told me that. I was only six. Two days later, he left for “The Land of Lincoln” and never came back.

Anyway, there I was on the sidewalk. A very tall woman pushing a baby carriage came along. She picked me up and put me in the carriage. I had been hoping to be kidnapped ever since my mother started putting me out on the sidewalk. Suddenly my mother appeared on the front porch. She was waving a potato masher and yelling: “Go ahead and take him, he’s nothing but a little pain in the ass!” The women yelled “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone!” Off we went down Grove Street headed to my new home. It was a giant mansion on the hill at the end of the street. I had gone sleigh riding there a few times in the winter, but that was it. My new mother’s name was Mary Garlitz. She was Don Garlitz’s sister—he drove a drag racer.

The house was so big, Mary got around via skateboard. She gave me a skateboard when I moved in. It had Spider-Man painted on it. She got her friend Tony Hawk to teach me how to use it. He actually skateboarded on the ceiling! You’d be watching TV and all-of-a-sudden he’d go rolling by and circle the TV room’s ceiling light like nothing happened.

Mary and I travelled the length and breadth of New Jersey soaking up its history and beauty. At one point we met up with Bruce Springsteen. I tagged along as Ruth and “The Boss” reminisced as we walked down the beach at Asbury Park. I think Springsteen’s song “Mary Queen of Arkansas” was inspired by Mary.

The best fun I had was visiting the “Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.” When I was really young, me and dad would go there. We would catch leeches and put them in zip-Lock bags. Dad loved to “fool” mom with them by putting them in the bathtub when mom was taking a bath. She would see one crawling up her leg and go crazy. Dad would laugh and say “It looks like your ugly mole is moving!” I wish I was allowed in the bathroom to see, but seeing mom naked was strictly prohibited.

When Mary and I visited the swamp, we marveled at the flowers, the turtles, the frogs, and the water snakes. I saw a raccoon laying on its back and panting. I poked it in the stomach and it snarled and bit my hand. Mary drove me to the emergency room where it was determined that I needed rabies shots. I had to get four shots, but that did not diminish the fun I had at the swamp.

While we were at the hospital, Mary told me my mother was there. She had a giant inoperable boil on her chest. It was three feet in diameter and weighed around 80 pounds. I told Mary that I didn’t want to see my mother. Mary said “Ok” and we left. That very night mom’s boil exploded and propelled her through her room’s wall and killed her. They had to call in extra orderlies to clean up the mess. Fox News ran a story about it titled “Pus Tsunami.” The on-site newsman said “She went out with a bang.” And “She made a big splash.”

I couldn’t wait to have my mother cremated so we could dump her ashes in a can and shove her in the ground. The cemetery won’t allow me to have the epitaph I wanted to have on her gravestone—they said it would offend a lot of people. I see it as a free speech issue. I am filing a lawsuit next week. My attorney, Rudy Giuliani, assures me it is a slam dunk. Mary told me he has been disbarred and shouldn’t be practicing law. I guess I’ll have to fire him.  I hope he gives me my $200,000 deposit back.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

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